"Obama art is not for mere mortals" reads the headline to Financial Times reporter Edward Luce's August 26 Denver Diary item. Luce described a shrine fit for pilgrimage by the likes of Chris Matthews or Lee Cowan, the so-called Manifest Hope gallery in Denver.:

The gallery, a few blocks from the convention centre, asked artists for their take on "unity, hope, patriotism, change and progress" and within two weeks it had received 1,500 submissions.

Among the icons of the Obamessiah one depicts the Illinois senator "bare-chested as he strides out of a rose-strewn ocean."

Luce concluded his squib by offering "[t]wo bits of advice for curators":

admit only the converted and conceal it from the candidate until the end of his second term. No mortal can survive this adulation.